"Those who think scientists understand the issues of prebiotic chemistry are wholly misinformed. Nobody understands them. Maybe one day we will. But that day is far from today. It would be far more helpful (and hopeful) to expose students to the massive gaps in our understanding. They may find a firmerand possibly a radically differentscientific theory.
The basis upon which we as scientists are relying is so shaky that we must openly state the situation for what it is: it is a mystery."
Self-Sustained Replication of an RNA Enzyme Tracey A. Lincoln, Gerald F. Joyce
They actually started with 3 carefully selected RNA strings and used one to join the other two small pieces into one piece (ligation), in a carefully controlled multi-step process. It's pretty much unlike anything likely to happen in nature.
Physicist Rob Sheldon made a pithy observation regarding the University of Groningen’s latest press release and the new paper by Sandownik, Mattia, Nowak and Otto: If this paper were about anything but ‘peptides’, it would be called ‘crystallization’. The origin of abiotic species: Seven epic fails
do we have self-replicating molecules? No did they "evolve" and diversify into two different types of self-replicating molecules? No does this "evolution" show the possibility of life's beginning? No